Many retail merchants have found that customers appreciate shopping at a store with a liberal merchandise return acceptance policy. However, implementing a liberal return acceptance policy may significantly decrease the store's profitability when existing sales are rescinded and returned merchandise may need to be re-sold at a discount, if it is sold again at all. Merchants would therefore like to provide the desired liberal return acceptance policy while reducing loss of sales.
Furthermore, many merchants have found that customers who make returns often do not soon shop again at the store. For example, one study of consumer behavior at a number of retail stores found that less than 15% of customers who returned merchandise made another purchase at the store within the next thirty days, and that over 50% of customers who returned merchandise did not make any other purchase at the store within the next eighteen months. These figures can be explained in part by customers who are unhappy with the merchandise purchased at the store and who may be disgruntled with the store as a whole. The figures may also be explained in part by shoppers who are returning gifts purchased by others or who may be otherwise in the store for the first time. Merchants would like to encourage both of these types of customers, as well as others, to shop in their stores and to become long-term customers, especially if it can be determined that they are not engaging in merchandise return activity that is fraudulent or abusive of store return policies. Currently, there is little, if any, incentive offered to a customer at the merchant's point of return to reconsider making a return, to immediately use any returned funds to re-purchase at the merchant's store, or to otherwise make another purchase within a defined span of time.